


Fallback Position

by nonky



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Ed Gorski, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 06:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7348354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of season three, a dejected Vic takes some vacation days. She has no particular plans and ends up going too far from home, wherever that's supposed to be for a divorced cop with a past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallback Position

She used to be a brunette. Officer Vic Moretti was hard-nosed, fearless and ambitious. She took calls solo that other beat cops refused to enter without calling for backup. She had good instincts. She took risks that worked out okay. 

And Vic Moretti mistook her love for the job as attraction for Ed Gorski.

Seeing Ed made her shoulder blades ache, her back trying to curl smaller and smaller to protect her vital organs and shrink her up too microscopic for shame to get at her. Vic had worked very hard to move on, to move to Wyoming and adapt. She bitched because that was her way, and she kept secrets because there was no innocent version of the tale. Her life had become cowardly as a matter of course. She ran and hid and ran and hid. 

There was a time of sweetness and real affection. Ed had called her to apartment 32 and they tussled wildly on a stranger's sofas and rugs. She had lingering kisses while pulling her uniform off lampshades, humming her regrets. She got flowers at home, and he got all the guys talking about baseball so he could drop a takeout lunch on her desk right at work. He said 'I love you' and he might have meant it. 

Vic had been determined not to listen to rumours or patronizing advice. She liked him and they had fun. Jaeger shots from a water gun weren't her best move on duty, but she worked hard otherwise. She was cutting her teeth, learning not to be fooled by words that didn't mean the same as deeds. 

She heard things, half conversations whispered in her hallway before she opened the door. They were all with his partner Bobby. They started sounding more damning every day. Her cop instincts told her to listen harder, look for opportunities to linger for information instead of kisses. She figured it out. 

The truth about his marriage - his oblivious wife innocent at home - hurt less than the scuzzy details of how Ed supplemented his cop salary. Cheaters were awful, but they had been awful together, equally dirtied by it. She could fuck a married man, but she couldn't fuck a crooked cop.

Vic took about a month to actually report them. She told IA a week, because that felt like a decent time to agonize over being a rat but not so long it made her seem like an accomplice. She had asked too many questions and Ed was starting to ask questions back. 

He always pinned her to a wall or a table, some uncomfortable edge where she couldn't get her balance. The rough but laughing stripping of her uniform became only rough. He kissed harder, said less and the only things that lingered were patented cop glares. He was worried about what she knew. She was getting tired of always having bruises. She had trouble turning her back on him without flinching when he came up behind her to embrace. 

She met Sean just before going to IA. Vic had been out with some other cops, so she had to play along with flirting. They all thought she was single and looking. She didn't have any good reason to blow him off. He was sweet and decent. He smiled at her and it meant he had good intentions. 

She'd never known what to do with good fucking intentions anyway. It moved faster than it should. She slept over at Sean's because she didn't want to go home to Ed haunting her doorway. She took a ring because that seemed like a thing that made other women happy. She tried to do the opposite of what she'd done with Ed and it worked for a while. There were lots of good parts of her life with Sean.

Ed circled like a vulture, waiting to pick her off when his threats burned her out enough to get careless. She had been grieving her own fall before it happened, dreading what he'd do to make her suffer.

Sean gave up a lot to move them to Wyoming. The problem was Vic had given up more. She was trying to rebuild a career that took a huge toll on a personal life. She was less than thrilled to realize the pace in Absaroka was either quiet or steady. Adrenaline rarely entered into her days, and the lack of excitement was draining. 

The danger made it fun, with Ed, with Walt, in her rivalry with Branch. It was what she needed to feel her own edge was of use and not a flaw. She could navigate all the men wound in her life, past and present, lovers and enemies

Later, Vic put together little things about Walt's behaviour. He wasn't just an aging sheriff who'd lost his wife. He had some kind of secret agenda. He was hiding in plain sight - a mystery as fascinating as her routine with her husband was dull. She enjoyed getting to know him in tiny admissions of personal details and the way he told her trivia about the land and the people she was trying to understand. 

She hadn't really expected her marriage to end literally in Walt's hands, another boring bit of paperwork tossed to the side of his desk. It had been too easy to let go of Sean because Walt had said things that seemed to form the vaguest ghost of a promise. 

There had been a slow building intensity crackling to life around them, obvious for anyone looking. Obvious enough for Ferg to openly speculate she was having an affair with Ed, and then spend the rest of the month watching nervously for Walt to call her out as if she was cheating on him. Ammunition for Branch's unofficial campaign to convince everyone who met her the job she'd earned was more like Walt keeping her as a pet. Branch had been able to plant that idea in Ferg's mind. 

Vic and Ferg didn't spend a lot of time together. She usually rode with Walt on the biggest cases, leaving the newest deputy to take the minor calls. She could see how he didn't know her well enough to say she wouldn't cheat. He'd taken the wrong leap but Ed was hanging around for her and disrupting her marriage. It was hard on her feelings that Ferg took her troubles and decided he could see her involved in a tacky affair and a beatdown at a motel. She'd thought he respected her more. 

Sean giving up on her was surreal. A part of her had always believed he would have trouble finding another person who wanted him, when it was her who couldn't form another relationship that held together under strain. 

Walt couldn't move forward with her. He could treat her like more than a deputy, but she wasn't invited into his personal life. He could confide his sins and lean on her, but he couldn't admit any feelings beyond gratitude. Vic was living with all the upheaval of an affair with her boss, and nothing was happening beyond the solemn cowboy gazes she felt like a hot, nervous shiver. 

He was two-stepping all over the line between them and darting back to safety once she moved to meet him.

She couldn't stay while everyone assumed something was going on between them. Vic could fight the world if she knew it wasn't her own delusion, but she wasn't sure there was anything to protect. Her offer to lie for him didn't include lying to Walt. She couldn't talk about the what ifs with him looking at her funny. He was trying to pretend they hadn't felt things. Vic was starting to lose respect for both of them. 

If nothing else, she knew when to get out of town.

 

She took vacation time and drove a rental car exactly half of the distance to Philly. She checked into a motel in Illinois and took showers in between swimming laps and eating fast food. She watched bad television and waited for someone to call looking for her. 

She wasted time, hoping someone cared to look for her after her vague voicemail on the office line gave more than one hint they should. She took a damn dairy tour. Time lagged, the friction of waiting polishing up her resentment. 

She was lonely and feeling stupid. Vic knew she could drive the rest of the way to her parents' house, but her life there had been destroyed or replanted in Wyoming. She could take the rest of her money and go somewhere different, provided she didn't care about the quality of the accommodations. 

Hell, the way she was feeling about people in general, it was an ideal time to become an embittered hermit living in the woods. Thanks to her time in Absaroka she almost knew how to go camping. 

Two days in, Vic called Ed Gorski, told him where she was, and invited him to join her. She didn't deserve Sean's wasted devotion. She hadn't been able to earn Walt's interest. 

It was time to fall back on old habits.

 

It wasn't that bad with Ed. The motel still sucked, but she braved the pool with him. They talked and drank. It was a long agenda of bad ideas she went along with, smiling into her own damnation. 

The third day they drove somewhere decent for dinner, and the drive back made something click in her brain. She'd traded Sean for Ed, the guy who'd sent her running to a man like Sean. They'd gone to dinner. Vic had been toying with fucking him if she was drunk enough later. 

She'd had the training about workplace stressors and traumatic violence. She didn't think it applied to her until she had to slap at Ed's arm, her other hand clamped over her mouth. 

He pulled over, swearing at her as she sprawled out of the car and vomited. She had no idea what she was doing. The unwelcome clarity shook her bodily. The last time she'd been so upset she'd been locked up with Sean, certain the shrouded body thrown down was Walt's. This time was a void of chilling fear. 

She was alone. She had thought Walt was there for her, but he'd stepped back. Maybe he meant it to be tactful, but he'd dropped her like dumping garbage. Vic felt like she hadn't quite made it out of Chance Gilbert's bunker alive. The divorce, the judgement and her confrontation with Branch had piled on. She'd actually called Ed to save her. 

It took almost an hour to breathe, Ed crouched by the highway at a loss for words. Walt wouldn't be able to say anything either, but he'd have fumbled with something. Ed sat there, headlights outlining his body. 

 

"I don't think I can do this," she said, stepping out of the bathroom later. 

She wasn't going to apologize. Ed had terrorized her and threatened all she valued in her life. He nodded, hunched at the foot of the second bed - as close to the door as he could get. 

Even her stalker was eager to be rid of her. 

"I don't know what to tell you," he said. "I mean, it's not like I have anything left."

"If I go back - to Wyoming - would you do anything?"

His expression was a flicker of self-loathing, followed by defeat.

"What could I do that hasn't happened to you? I mean, Jesus, Vic . . . I loved you. I probably still love you. But all this shit and then all that shit? I was a little pissed at your pretty boy for being overwhelmed, but it's a whole fucking lot."

He stood up, brushing his hands off on his jeans. "We both know you can go back to Wyoming no problem. I think showing my face there is a good way to get shot in a freak accident involving your sheriff's gun," Ed told her. 

"I'm too tired to be angry anymore. I thought you waltzed away to this happy little life and my friend died. My friend was a criminal and he killed himself. I didn't stop him. I don't really know forgiveness, but I get why you did it. You don't have any kind of peace about it."

She must have loved him, once. It was the only way being this conflicted could be so shitty now. Vic looked down. "I'll get my stuff and go. I can be there by ten tomorrow," she said. "And I'll settle up the room. You can let the front desk know if you want to stay longer."

They both looked at the pyramid of beer cans on the table and the overflowing garbage can. Both beds were used and it had been a long week since she'd checked herself into limbo. 

"I don't think I will," Ed said. "Hey, six hours is not going to make much difference. Get some sleep and we'll part company in the morning."

The phrase was very distinct, his tone meaningful. It sounded like the old fashioned way Walt might say it. Vic blinked at tears. 

"Yeah, you're right. God, I'm screwed up. I'm not sure there's anything left to go back to in Absaroka," she told him. 

"Walt's still there. He was willing to die for you before. It has to mean something."

She nodded, but she wasn't sure. It was just easier to pretend she had some hope left.


End file.
